No Hunting Part 3

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Thursday, June 27, 2013 Nick Cirino

If you read carefully, there are more differences in these two passages than we talked about Wednesday. 

Luke 18:37-38 ESV

     · a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging... And he cried out, "Jesus, Son of
       David, have mercy on me!"               

Matthew 20:29-30 ESV    
     · And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and... they cried out,
       Lord have mercy on us, Son of David!" 

Did you notice that what is said is slightly different?  Is this a contradiction? Here are a couple thoughts I have about this:  

1. It is possible that the blind men said both of these things, and more. They were yelling out so much the crowd was getting annoyed with them and telling them to be quiet (Matt 20:31; Luke 18:39). It could be that one time they yelled out what Luke records, and another time they yelled out what Matthew records. 

2. They were probably speaking Aramaic, the language of the Jews of the day. Matthew and Luke both wrote in Greek, so what they record is a translation. When you translate from one language to another, there is usually multiple ways to do it and still be true to the original meaning (think about how many Bible translations we have!) This probably is not super relevant to this passage, but it can be important in other places in the four Gospels.  

3. Check out tomorrow’s blog for number 3! 

Image from: flickr.com/photos/jamesjordan/